passage of this act." The history of this brief bill can be fully traced through all the proceedings that followed to the enactment of the law, because its author was identified with those proceedings more fully than was any senator or other member of the House of Representatives. That bill was referred to the committee for the District of Columbia, of which its author, General Ashley, was a member, and of which the Hon. Roscoe Conkling was chairman. In the routine of business the bill when read to the committee was by common consent referred to General Ashley, who, because he had introduced the measure and had it at the time in charge, at once became the target for many indignities from pro-slavery members of the committee and slave-owning residents of the District. Soon after the bill was thus referred to him as a committee of one, General Ashley was invited by Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, to a conference, during which the latter asked that the bill be amended so as to provide for compensation to loyal slave owners for slaves made free by its enactment. This was a remarkable suggestion, coming as it did from a man who at that time and during the remainder of Mr. Lincoln's administration was considered the leader of the extreme antislavery element in the republican party. But Mr. Chase knew that the President was contemplating an effort to enlist the border states in a scheme for gradual emancipation with compensation by the Government for losses thus sustained. Therefore, it was his conviction that the President would object to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia unless provision was made for compensation. To this General Ashley was at first strongly opposed, but after a prolonged interview with the President, he came to look upon the suggestion of Mr. Chase as a possible means of securing for the bill some support it might not otherwise have received. At President Lincoln's suggestion General Ashley decided to ask the Senate Committee for the District of Columbia to assign one of its members to confer with him and aid in the preparation of a bill that would be acceptable to

the President. Fortunately, Senator Lot M. Morrill of Maine was appointed as General Ashley's associate and after repeated and prolonged conferences extending over a period of several weeks, those two gentlemen came to agreement on a bill which, after being approved by President Lincoln and Mr. Chase and by the committees of the two Houses of Congress, was, on the 12th day of March, 1862, reported to the House of Representatives by General Ashley with the recommendation of the committee that it be passed. Along with a like recommendation from the Senate committee for the District of Columbia, the bill was reported to the senate by Senator Morrill, and after extended discussion and amendment, on the 3rd of April, 1862, it was passed by a vote of twenty-nine for to fourteen against. On the 11th of April the bill as amended by the senate passed the House by a vote of ninety-two for to thirty-eight against, and was approved by the President and became a law on the 16th of April, 1862.

The law abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and appropriated one million dollars to compensate loyal slave owners for their slaves at the rate of three hundred dollars for each slave made free by that law, and also appropriated one hundred thousand dollars for expenses of voluntary emigration to Hayti or Liberia. General Ashley's objection to the compensation feature of this bill, already mentioned, was on account of his disapproval of such a recognition by the Government of the slave holder's ownership of their slaves, and also because he believed that three-fourths of those who would receive compensation were secessionists at heart and in sympathy with the Rebellion. Many other radical antislavery members were of the same opinion, but all submitted to that objectionable feature of the bill because of their ardent desire to banish slavery from the national capital and from the District in which it was located. President Lincoln, however, was in favor of compensating all loyal slave owners for slaves made free by action of the Government and providing for the cost of voluntary colonization, and he was delighted to have

both of these features included in the law making the District of Columbia free. Of the other four antislavery measures adopted during that session of Congress the most important was the law prohibiting slavery from the territories of the United States and from all territory that for any purpose or at any time might be acquired by the nation. The enactment by Congress of that law was peculiarly pleasing to Mr. Lincoln, as it was in the line of the teachings to which he has devoted so many years. The fundamental doctrine of the republican party was that "The Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the territories for their government," and that in the exercise of that power Congress should prohibit slavery in the territories of the United States. The great speeches which made Abraham Lincoln famous and won for him the Presidency were all in defense of that doctrine, and he was never more eloquent and forceful than when insisting that not one foot of free soil should ever be contaminated by slavery. And when it became his privilege, by his signature, to make valid an enactment embodying the teachings of all his life, the foundation principle of his party and the requirements of civic righteousness, he had reached a height of personal achievement above which very few have ever risen. And in the enactment of that law the long, hard struggle against oppression found a rich reward. Since the glad day in which that law became effective not one inch of free territory in all of our national domain has ever felt the tread of the heel of tyranny.

Quite as gratifying to all loyal people as the law granting freedom to the slaves of the disloyal was that other law providing for the enlistment of colored freedmen as soldiers in the Union army. No one act of the Government, save the edict of the Emancipation, wrought as effectively as did that law in the final overthrow of the Rebellion. The measure of Congress which afforded the human heart greatest relief and gratification was the additional article of war prohibiting the arrest of the fugitive slaves by any officer or person in the

military or naval service. Apart from slavery itself the most objectionable feature of the reign of slavery was the Fugitive Slave Law, by which the freedom-loving people of the free states were required to pursue, capture and return to slavery fugitives from bondage who were fleeing to a land of liberty, and that article of war marked the end of that unspeakably offensive Fugitive Slave Law.

These five antislavery laws enacted during that first regular session of the thirty-seventh Congress, together with the Confiscation Law passed during the special session, marked the great advance being made in the direction of the extinction of slavery. During the time these measures were under consideration in Congress, President Lincoln was earnestly engaged in efforts to persuade the Border States to adopt a system of emancipation with compensation by the Government for their slaves thus made free. His pleadings were pathetic, but were all unavailing. His efforts, however, were helpful to the enactment of the antislavery laws before recited and aided in creating the conditions which brought forth the great edict of Emancipation. The trend of events was evidently in the direction of a declaration against slavery, but before conditions, in President Lincoln's estimation, seemed to demand such action he was unexpectedly required by his convictions of duty again to interpose his authority and overrule a movement against slavery by one of his subordinates.

On the 9th of May, 1862, General David Hunter, in command of the department of the South, issued an order of military emancipation which on the 19th of May President Lincoln in a proclamation declared to be without authority from the General Government and therefore void. No improper motives could by any one be ascribed to General Hunter for his action in this matter. He was an officer of exceptional ability with no political aspirations or tendencies, and was a devoted personal and political friend of Mr. Lincoln. His department included the states of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, having a population which normally

consisted of from three to five slaves to one white person. The whites were secessionists and had all fled upon the approach of the Union army. The colored people were all loyal and were eager to aid the Government as laborers or as soldiers in the army, for which they were at the time organizing. The order of the Secretary of War to General Sherman hereinbefore mentioned and the laws enacted by Congress, which was then in session, together with conditions in his department, seemed to General Hunter to justify his proclamation of freedom for the slaves.

But the issuing of that proclamation by General Hunter was an exercise of authority that President Lincoln regarded as the prerogative of the Chief Executive only, and upon that ground the proclamation was overruled. Secretary Chase in a letter to the President asked him to permit the order to stand, but Mr. Lincoln was clear in his conviction that he could not rightfully do so. Therefore, on the proclamation he wrote, as he also stated in his letter to Chase, "No commanding general should do such a thing upon my responsibility without consulting me.

In his proclamation of May 19th, 1862, annulling the emancipation portion of General Hunter's order, President Lincoln said: "I further make known that, whether it be competent for me, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the Government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies and camps.'

By comparing these quotations from the President's proc

8 Warden's "Life of Salmon P. Chase," p. 434. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VII., p. 167.

• Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VII., pp. 171-172.